There was a volley of curses, oaths mingled with sounds that reminded me of nothing so much as a spitting cat, and a familiar voice screamed in almost inarticulate rage:
“Let me go, damn ye, or I'll knife ye!”
“Good heavens!” I cried. “Let her go, Barkhouse. It's Mother Borton.”
Mother Borton freed herself with a vicious shake, and called down the wrath of Heaven and hell on the stalwart guard.
“You're the black-hearted spawn of the sewer rats, to take a respectable woman like a bag of meal,” cried Mother Borton indignantly, with a fresh string of oaths. “It's fire and brimstone you'll be tasting yet, and you'd 'a' been there before now, you miserable gutter-picker, if it wasn't for me. And this is the thanks I git from ye!”
“I'll apologize for his display of gallantry,” said I banteringly. “I've always told him that he was too fond of the ladies.”
I was mistaken in judging that this tone would be the most effective to restore her to good humor. Mother Borton turned on me furiously.
“Oh, it's you that would set him on a poor woman as comes to do you a service. I was as wide-awake as any of ye. I never closed my eyes a wink, and you has to come a-sneakin' up and settin' your dogs on me.” Mother Borton again drew on an apparently inexhaustible vocabulary of oaths. “Oh, you're as bad as him,” she shouted, “and I reckon you'd be worse if you knowed how.” And she spat out more curses, and shook her fist in impotent but verbose rage.
“Come in,” I said, unlocking the door and lighting up my room. “You can be as angry as you like in here, and it won't hurt anything.”
Mother Borton stormed a bit, and then sullenly walked in and took a chair. Silence fell on her as she crossed the threshold, but she glowered on us with fierce eyes.